It was a gambling coup quite literally straight from the pages of a Dick
Francis novel.

For a businessman and racehorse owner has beaten the bookmakers by using a method outlined in the master storyteller's last novel.

Douglas Taylor scooped almost £165,000 by splitting up a mammoth £33,000 bet to keep the odds on his runner as high as possible.

He recruited 200 foreign betting 'couriers' who were each given detailed written instructions to place £165 (euro 200) on his horse D Four Dave in a 7pm race on Monday evening.

They were ordered to place their bets in bookmakers at exactly 6.55pm, giving the turf accountants little inkling that such a large bet was being placed on one horse, and no time to react.

The method almost exactly mirrors that used in Even Money by Dick Francis and his son Felix, which was published last July.

In the book 30 "juvenile delinquents from High Wycombe" are each given £200 and "strict instructions" to place the cash on a 100-1 outsider, Cricket Hero, five minutes before the off. It duly romps home to secure a £600,000 prize.

Mr Taylor used around 200 couriers, handing each euro 200, a short written instruction note, and a cheap wristwatch set with the alarm to go off at 6.55pm.

The businessman, managing director of Dublin-based recruitment company MCR Group, said Francis's last novel had inspired the idea.

"I wouldn't say it was months in the planning, weeks maybe," he said, "but it was polished after reading Even Money."

On Monday morning bookmakers were offering 14/1 on D Four Dave at Kilbeggan in County Westmeath in Ireland, following a poor race at the course earlier this month which had seen the six-year-old beaten by more than 40 lengths.

By 6.55pm most bookies had cut those odds to 7/1 or 5/1 – still enabling a tidy profit. In the event the horse notched up an easy win.

Mr Taylor admitted he was "nervous" in the run-up to the bet.

"I got married on Saturday last and people were asking me was I nervous. I was telling them 'yes' – but I meant I was nervous about Monday," he told the Racing Post.

But he said: "The race itself couldn't have gone better, it was like a dream."

Had Mr Taylor placed a single £33,000 (euro 40,000) bet on the horse he would not have secured such good odds, said Sharon Byrne, chairman of the Irish Bookmakers' Association.

She explained: "What they did wasn't illegal. They did it because they were trying to hold the price."

She added: "They hit all the shops at exactly the same time. They were very clever to keep the money off the track.

"They worked the system perfectly, with military precision. It's a classic."

Taylor's decision to use foreigners did prove a hitch, however. He did it to minimise the risk of news of it leaking, but some could not understand their instructions and had to hand the notes to counter staff to read, which tipped off a handful of bookmakers.

A number of couriers are also thought to have failed to place their bets. Nonetheless, Mr Taylor said that even with these glitches his winnings were "not far off euro 200,000".

Ever the businessman, he kept his costs low. While Francis' character gave his delinquents a quarter of the winnings, Mr Taylor's couriers only got a flat fee of about £20. He even hopes to sell the £5 watches for a profit.

Fittingly, the gamble took place on the day a memorial service was held for Dick Francis at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in central London. He died in February aged 89.

Felix Francis said he "loved the story", adding: "I hope Douglas Taylor read the book, because it's straight out of those pages."